


Warden's Promise

by MaevesChild



Series: Through the Eluvian [4]
Category: Dragon Age II, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Angst, F/M, Romance, Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-28
Updated: 2015-02-28
Packaged: 2018-03-15 17:07:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,193
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3455096
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MaevesChild/pseuds/MaevesChild
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I got a Prompt; Hawke/Stroud, Love at first sight.</p><p>Just in case you thought you'd found a way for "Here Lies the Abyss" to be less traumatic, here I come to ruin it for you.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Warden's Promise

I met Jean-Marc Stroud for the first time in the Deep Roads when he saved my sister's life.  He said it wasn't a Cure but a Calling, but I didn't care.  Bethany was slipping away before my eyes and I couldn't just let it happen.  That wasn't what I did.  I never stood by and watched when I could get foolishly involved instead.

Stroud had a handsome face and kind eyes and a lilting Orlesian accent that made me feel safe, even as Bethany thrashed and flailed with her eyes rolled back into her head.  Stroud held me back, hands firm but soft around my arms.  Everything was horrible and I was terrified but it felt so good to be near his calm, reassuring presence, I almost felt guilty about it.  When the seizure finally stopped and Bethany opened her eyes, he didn't judge me as I openly wept on my knees with my sister in my arms.

He said it made him even with Anders.  I never found out what that meant.

 

The next time I saw him, Kirkwall was on fire.

I saw Bethany first, her familiar magic cracking through the air. She and two other Wardens were surround by Qunari and I did what I always do; I charged in like a madwoman, sword naked and shield like a battering ram.  I got between a particularly wicked looking Qunari blade and Stroud's throat, smashing my shield into the horned head and jamming my blade into the soft flesh under its jaw until the blade reappeared behind its ear.

When the battle was over, there was a pile of dead Qunari around us.  I was spattered with blood from head to toe and Stroud smiled at me like I was the sun.

He said they couldn't stay, even as the city fell to ruin around us, but he pulled a ring off his finger and pressed it into the palm of my hand and told me he owed me a life.  He said the ring was called  _Warden's Promise_  and that it was a promise he would never break.  He told me that if I needed him, he'd come back.  He told me to call him Jean-Marc.

If Anders hadn't torn me away, I think I would have kissed him.

I didn't see him again for three years, not until I had won and lost the chair of the Vicountess in Kirkwall, not until the Chantry was rubble and I'd killed my lover in its ashes.

I'd fallen in love with Anders and sometimes I wondered if it happened because he was the only other Grey Warden I'd ever known.  He was exactly nothing like Stroud, and hardly anything like  _Anders_  as time went on, but I loved him anyway.

Or at least I thought I did, until he betrayed me and made the streets of Kirkwall run red with blood.  I put a dagger between his ribs and he thanked me for it.  When I fled the city, I had no one.  I'd lost my father, my brother, my mother and my sister.  I lost my lover to madness.  I lost my city to the grip of red lyrium.  All I had left was a ring I wore on a chain around my neck, claiming it reminded me of my sister. 

It was a lie.

I found him again, as if it was fate, at a Deep Roads entrance just outside the border of Orlais.  

Stroud looked older, haggard, lost.  He said something was wrong with the Grey Wardens, that there was corruption that was tearing them apart.  He told me there was an ancient darkspawn who had destroyed the conclave at the Temple of Sacred Ashes and that he was debating crossing the border back into Orlais, though he'd swore to himself he'd never return there.

He said this darkspawn had a name,  _Corypheus,_ and I knew it was my fault.

I told him my story.  I told him about my father's blood magic prison and how I'd been tricked into setting Corypheus free.  I told him how I swore he was dead, how I'd left his smoking corpse in a pile on the mountain.  But I was wrong, and I begged his forgiveness.  He told me there was nothing to forgive. 

I asked him for his help and he asked me for mine.  I pulled a map out of my pocket and caught my fingers in the chain around my neck.  The ring he gave me all those years before clinked against my armor.

Jean-Marc rolled the metal band between his fingers.  He looked into my eyes and I saw reflected there all those wild, illogical, unreasonable feelings I'd been trying to hide from myself and from him.  He kissed me for the first time as the world fell to pieces around us. 

His moustache tickled.  I liked it.

I loathed to leave him now that I finally found him, finally giving into feelings that I'd had from that very first moment I'd laid eyes on him all those years before.  But when I got word from Varric, that there was actually help for the both of us, I knew I had to go.

I agreed to bring help and we parted with kisses and promises and all sorts of ridiculous romantic nonsense that I'd swore I'd never say.  But Jean-Marc smiled at me and it all seemed right and perfect and I decided I didn't care. 

When I left to meet Varric and this Herald of Andraste person, I told him that I loved him.

True to his word, I found him in Crestwood, hiding out in a cave like a dashing pirate.  It was like something from one of Varric's novels, all moody candlelight and the echoes of dripping water.  

I resisted the urge to throw myself at him.  I also resisted the urge to hit him, when he told the Herald about The Calling.  How could he have kept that from me?  I bit my tongue as we made plans to scout the Western Approach.  We agreed to report back to the Inquisition and the Herald went off to do whatever it was she did.  As soon as they were out of earshot, I pinned him against the table and demanded he tell me what in the Abyss was going on.

Jean-Marc looked at the floor.  He looked over my shoulder.  I grabbed his face between my hands and I made him look at me.  His pale eyes were haunted and his eyelashes were clumped together.  My heart ached in my chest and I couldn't stop myself.  I kissed him and I held him and I begged him not to leave me.

I'd lost everyone and everything.  I had nothing left except how I felt about this broken Grey Warden.  My heart was shattered into a thousand bloody pieces.

His voice was soft, so soft, so heartfelt and sincere when he spoke that his words burned themselves into my memory.

"Hawke," he said and tangled his fingers in my hair, "Marion.  I owe you a life, my life.  I will give you as much of it as I can, for as long as I can."

He kissed me.  We made love right there, armor pieces clanking to the floor.  He boosted me up on to the table with only a ring on a chain between us.  I put my hand over his heart, skin on skin.  Jean-Marc gathered the broken shards of my heart together and cradled them, finally whole in the palm of his hand.

In the hot, wicked sands of the Western Approach, perched on the wrecked stones of a Tevinter ruin, Jean-Marc had to slaughter his brothers, his sisters, a line of young Wardens who'd learned under his command.  They were his children.  His siblings.  His family.

They were all he had, after his own family was murdered.  

He was stoic as a statue until we found the cold privacy of Skyhold again and this time, he wept.  He broke his knuckles against the stone walls and his sword, still dark with Warden blood clattered to the floor.  He screamed and I held him; I let him rage and I was there to catch him when he fell to his knees.

I told him that I loved him.  I told him he had me.  I told him he owed me a life, and I refused to let him dash himself to pieces.

He wept into my neck.  I held him together.

In the morning, Mother Giselle said some words and I got one more ring, this one a band of steel for my finger that lead to my heart.  I slid its mate on his finger.  He gave me his life and I gave him my heart.

"Marion Stroud," he said.

"Jean-Marc Hawke," my reply.

The Inquisition built siege engines.  They made battle plans.  I sparred with my husband in the courtyard and vowed to kill everyone and anything that tried to stand between us.  My heart beat in my chest, held together by a band of steel, by his fingers, by his smile.

Love at first sight.  Love every day since.

They attacked Adamant fortress at nightfall. I scaled the walls with the troops and Jean-Marc fought at the Inquisitor's back.  I made Varric promise to keep him alive.  He owed me one, or a hundred.

I spared what Wardens I could and slaughtered the rest and left their bodies on the wall.  Then I heard voices; Varric and the twang of Bianca's bolts.  When they came around the corner, splattered in blood but still alive, my heart leapt to see him.  Jean-Marc, grim and battered but very much alive.  

We fought together and the dragon came.  It was more than a dragon, less than an archdemon but every kind of horrible.  The Warden-Commander, the hollow soul in her eyes so familiar, so like Jean-Marc's eyes when I found him at the border; afraid, broken,  _lost_.  She had nothing and gave everything, the last of her magic tearing the dragon's belly open and tearing the stones out from under our feet.

We fell.

The Inquisitor tore open the sky.  

I'd been to the Fade before and I hated it, but this was entirely something else.  This was place, not a dream.  This was a nightmare, but it was real.  The demon laughed, teased, threatened.  Varric looked nauseous.  The Inquisitor gritted her teeth.  I squeezed Jean-Marc's hand and tried to be brave.

"Hawke, did you think anything you did mattered?" the demon taunted.  "You couldn't save your brother, your mother.  You killed Anders with your own hands." It's voice rattled in my skull.  "Your sister is going to die.  Jean-Marc is going to  _die._ "

I didn't dare reply.  I was going to tear that demon apart with my bare hands.

I didn't get the chance.

We found the tear into the Fade they made to let the demon into the world and we fought on its edges.  We bled.  We battled every fear made flesh, every horror, every nightmare we'd ever had with legs and eyes and claws.  They were real and they could really die.

They fled through the rift; the Inquisitor's companions, Varric and then between us and the rift, the nightmare rose again, with a hundred eyes, with claws, with venom, with more than we could hope to defeat.

"Go, I'll hold it off," I heard myself scream.  Jean-Marc spun to face me.

"No! A Grey Warden caused this, a Warden should...."

"Help them rebuild," I insisted.  "And should  _live._  Please, Maker, Jean-Marc."

"Hawke," he said.  "Marion. I owe you a life."  He turned to the Inquisitor.  "It's been an honor."

"No, you can't," I begged, but he and the Inquisitor had decided without me.

"Stroud," the Inquisitor said to him.

He shook his head as he unsheathed his blade.  "No," he smiled.  "Hawke."

And he charged, sword flashing.  The Inquisitor grabbed me, dragged me, pulled me through the rift before I could gather myself to protest.  I fell to the ground; my eyes burned.  I don't know what happened.  I didn't know what was happening until I heard the screech of magic, the fire that burned without flame and the rift sealed shut behind us.

The Inquisitor caught her breath as her troops, the living Wardens, the whole world seemed to scream their approval.  I was on my knees.

"Where's Stroud?" a voice asked.

"He gave his life for us," the Inquisitor replied, and my heart stopped, a dead weight in my chest.  "Stroud died a hero."

"He promised," I said, but no one heard me.

They spoke and I didn't hear a thing.  My ears rang, my heart...I couldn't feel my heart anymore.  It was lost, trapped in the Fade where I would never walk again.

"Stroud was a good man," Varric said, his hand on my shoulder. "I'm sorry."

"Hawke," I managed to whisper, my voice tearing my throat, the ring hanging on its chain around my neck choking me, suffocating me.  The steel ring on my finger was as heavy as lead.  "Jean-Marc  _Hawke_."


End file.
